 Our next panel discussion is going to talk about prerequisites of honing skills and ensuring seamless adaptivity to workplace. Noturing talent using the latest technologies and how the budding professionals can adjust and adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the industry. We have a stellar panelist with us on talking about this topic. We have with us Madi Amritkar, founder and CEO, glad you came. Megha Bihal, Account Director, Hill and Nolten Strategies. Vasundra Singh, Senior Vice President, Business and Strategies, Value 360. We were also going to have Ms. Taruna Gupta, Season Communication Professional. But due to her ill health, she couldn't join us today, but we wish her a speedy recovery. And moderating this session is our very own from Exchange for Media, Shrabasti Malik. A very warm welcome to all of you. Good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, a very warm welcome to Mr. Amritkar, Ms. Singh and Ms. Bell. Wonderful to have you in this session at the E4MPR and COPCOM 3030 Summit. The topic of the session is prerequisites of honing skills and ensuring seamless adaptivity to the workplace. And I would like to start my first question with the thought that every industry requires skills that need honing, that need training to become more successful. So on this slide, what are the fundamental lessons that a budding professional, especially in the PR and corporate communication industry, could invite from the industry leaders? If I could start with Ms. Singh. Thank you. Thank you so much, Shrabasti. And a very warm good afternoon to everybody here on the panel and thank you Exchange for Media for giving us this opportunity to be part of this conversation and also a big hi to everybody who is joined virtually. So coming to the first question, which is primarily what are some of the key lessons that budding professionals should invite from industry leaders? I have fundamentally, there are many things that a budding professional would learn and invite from industry leaders. But I'm just listing out top four key takeaways according to me. So first is learning never stops, be it at any level and be it whether you are intern or whether you reach the senior most position in your company. Now, all working or upcoming professionals in this industry need to have a very keen eye and a very keen interest in learning because that should be a constant thing. It's imperative for them to understand that while you are working, things around us are constantly changing. It is constantly evolving. And learning does not mean that you get a degree or you're just getting a certificate because it can be just learning on the job itself. And workplace demands competency according to me does not necessarily need a degree. So if we look at the industry as well as the media landscape, it is undergoing a tremendous amount of change with, you know, there has been a burst of digital, you know, evolved with this changing then the chances that you may become irrelevant. From a media landscape perspective also, I mean, if we see if we analyze when we were, you know, starting off, it was a different kind of reporting that used to happen. There were very minimal platforms that were there. It was pretty much traditional. It was almost like reporting packs today with the advent of so many new platforms. It's we're living almost in a clickbait kind of a world where everybody wants to break the news first. New media formats have emerged. You know, you have long analysis content platforms like your morning context, like your Ken, a lot of, of course, your traditional formats are there, your social media news platforms have emerged. So it's changing very dynamically. But I think this changing dynamic is to the advantage of the professionals because, you know, we were born in a very traditional setup and we had to migrate to learn the digital world. And these guys have actually, they have, they, they, they don't have to really migrate. They have actually been born as digital first itself and they already know the digital world better than anybody else. And so, but even for them, the scenarios is changing. New words, new, new buzzwords like, you know, web 3.0 or the revolution is happening metaverse is being spoken about. So professionals have to be very aware of these changing industry and, you know, media dynamics and know how to navigate and utilize them well. So learning becomes a very, very key new look. Second is, I think from, from second takeaway would be maintaining honesty with the clients team and focus on, you know, building an equation like a personal equation. Now, if you look at the best industry leaders that would have emerged in the last few years, they would always, they would always have the best relations with their clients. Now, a lot of times, you know, young professionals are in awe of their clients and they sometimes very scared to even give real feedback or disagreeing with their point of view, you know, or just saying, no, that this can't be done. Now, as PR professionals, right, expectation, setting with your client is also very important. Cause if you don't, and you agree to everything, ultimately, it will be you who will be like at the receiving end cause you won't be able to deliver cause of expectations are mismatched, right? So at the, at the onset, it's very important that, you know, you, you put your point of view across and later, because even when they see the results, no, even if initially there might be friction, but when they see the result in their favor, they are always going to appreciate the honesty and the right advice. And that's exactly what you're there for. So ideas invest in turning your clients and, you know, the comms team on your clients' time into extended teams, work with them like partners. It's, it's a relationship and rapport that you form with the comms team that is going to matter the most in the long run, like, like relation in our personal life also. And if you're able to do this well, a lot of times it'll be, you know, they will be pushing for you. They'll be the ones who will root for you the hardest. And at times you may even falter slightly. They'll be the ones covering up for you even before their, you know, bosses. Third takeaway for me is stability. I think stability is the key to attaining industry knowledge and eventually growing in your career. Now, a lot of upcoming and budding professionals need to understand the importance of, you know, building the right foundation, learning and experience early on. And you need to invest time if you have found a good organization which is providing you holistic development and the right opportunity. Invest time there. And if you see any respected and good industry leader today or in the last, you know, 10 years, one thing will be common thread that they would have been very stable and spent considerably time in a particular organization before, you know, moving. Or they would have invested good amount of time in learning initially also, because it's important to grow, not just monetarily, it's also important to grow functionally. And if you keep hopping from one place to the other, you may get, you may have monetary benefits initially, but from a learning path in terms of understanding the real challenges of the industry and understanding the craft or the trade, the craft and the trade, that will somewhere you will start lacking. So stability is a key to attaining right knowledge which will eventually lead to growth and success. Thank you, Ms. Singh. Thank you for your opening words. Ms. Behl, I would like to come to you and please share your ideas on the same that how these lessons should be given to the budding professionals. Thank you so much, Shabasti. So first of all, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. And I kind of agree with Vasundhra. I think today's generation is kind of very well informed and we all know that exposure levels that are given to them are much higher than most of us out here. And they are kind of more exposed to the digital world and they're just simply more connected in many ways possible. And when they join an organization, they come with a mindset that they want to do everything be it social, traditional, graphics, content, they would want to explore everything. However, I think it is very important for us as leaders to kind of enable them to dissect their knowledge which they have learned from universities or colleges and utilize that in a very right way and the right place. And maybe sometimes that might even include guiding them to slow down a little bit, take a pause, think, maybe take a step back and focus on certain key areas first and then move on to the next thing. And the second thing which I can speak from my personal experience from when I started my career is basically people management. And we all know that we are in the field of communication and even if it is any industry people management is something that is extremely important. I remember when I was young, I would just sometimes kind of speak my mind out. But, and I'm not saying that it's wrong in any way but we are in an industry wherein it is very important to kind of articulate the way you are communicating to both your peers, maybe internal stakeholders as well as external stakeholders. And of course, the skill comes with experience. And we as leaders, I think we should be here, we play a very important role in terms of guiding them to articulate before they kind of share their thoughts to the external media out there. So yes, I think these are some of the learnings from my younger days for people who are kind of starting their career in this industry. Thank you, Ms. Bhair for your points. So we're coming to the next question. And before coming to the next question, it's my kind request to all the panelists to keep your answers within one to two minutes, just keep it crisp and short. Thank you so much. So my next question is that how can agencies prepare young talent to celebrate successes and also learn from their failures? I would like to start with Mr. Amritkar. Sir, you're muted. Sir, you're on mute. Okay, thank you, Rochika, for your question. Coming back to the first question, I would like to say what I feel is the three important lessons for all the budding talent is the first one is time management because I feel time is an important asset and how because we just have so many hours in a day. So how are you gonna manage your time is I think gonna be an important aspect for all the budding people. Second, what I feel is about having the right communication because communication and having said that if you communicate things very clearly, it's important for your clients or internal team. So I feel communication is an important role where you can basically decide what you have to basically do in life. The third aspect, what I feel is take and learn from criticism because I see a lot of youths in the age bracket of 21 to 26, in the young generation out there, the Gen Zs we call, it's very difficult for them to adapt to the situation to handle stress and pressure at the time because this is what I've seen through my experience. So I think the message that I would like to give is to start taking because all 30 days are not gonna be your day, one day might be bad. So you'll have to learn from your mistakes and see how you basically eventually do better. The other message basically I would like to say is how, are you saying something? No, no, I was just agreeing to your point. Please continue. Okay, cool. The other thing is about how we basically wanna nurture the young talent is what I feel because we of course are a six years old agency based in Bombay. What I feel is having the right culture, having the right mindset because we have our off-site trips every six months. Like we just went to Agadpoori last week. Now our next trip is planning go. So I think having that right culture will help the people change their mindset because I see there is immense pressure everywhere. If you're working in a bank or any other agency. So I think for us, for us, we as an agency to have the right talent is of course having a proper training process at the start. Now if you see the IT companies like Accenture has a right training module which I feel we as an agency are somewhere lacking because once a fresher joins in we just basically give them a normal training and we just get them to work. So I feel a right training is required and we eventually try and create the right culture around us. I think it will help eventually create more young talents and have a right stability. I'm so sorry for my mistake. Thank you so much Mr. Amrukkar for your words. Ms. Behel, what do you think should the young talents should learn? How should they learn from their failures and how can agencies prepare them to celebrate the successes as well? I somewhere think that everything boils down to the work culture of an organization. I have seen that we generally kind of reward a person when someone has achieved a milestone or has accomplished something big. But somewhere I believe it should be the person's work ethic and also efforts that we need to acknowledge. Just a pat on the back for trying or putting effort every day is in itself a success for youngsters. And trust me, it kind of goes a long way in motivating people and retaining them in the organization. Talking about failure, I think I personally don't believe in this word failure and I always say this, it's basically a learning experience. We need to kind of create a culture wherein people can make mistakes. But as leaders, we need to ensure that they kind of learn from their mistakes and come out even stronger and better and not demotivated. So like I mentioned earlier, it is not failure, it's kind of a learning experience. And I will just like to quote a phrase that I recently read in an article by Sundar Pichai. He stated that reward efforts and not outcomes. And honestly, that says a lot for me. So I generally want to reward efforts and not outcomes. Definitely. Missing, what is your remark on the scene? So I think my comment here would be that our industry, when we look at the celebrating success and we look at learning from failures, I think this industry is a great level. You may have done a great job on one day, got a lot of accolades, got a lot of trying to appreciation, got a great story. And the very next day, it's not a great day and you would have missed an opportunity or you would have missed a great story or anything. So the industry itself is a great level or every day you're learning that not to take either success or failure too seriously. And I agree that the culture is very, very important in enabling an environment that can be motivating even if you make mistakes, it's okay. And I think from a success point of view, what young professionals need to understand very critical is that it should not get to your head. And you may plan a great campaign, but always remember that there are multiple hands and heads coming together as a team to make that possible. So it's very, very important that you understand the key roles that all team members have played and understand the power of teamwork when it comes to success. When it comes to failure, I think failure is the biggest opportunity to learn. And if you are able to just become systematic in your work, create a checklist, a checklist is something that we tell our clients all the time, that's the first thing that we do for our clients, but try and do that for your own self also whenever things are going wrong, build a checklist, follow the process, put processes in place, and the chances of you going wrong in your approach will be minimized effectively in future. So that would be my takeaway. We are just going to add one line. I think I agree too, as well, what you mentioned. I think small appreciations also make all this young talent feel because I have 30 people taking all our girls in my team and I tell them, oh, you're looking nice today and say you made my team. So I think a small appreciations in our standard meetings, I think we keep them motivated. I think learning has to be there. So I think just to add, I think I agree what we have to do as a, you know, talents and how we can eventually train them right. Absolutely. We talk about celebrating the success and learning from learning and relearning from failures and everything. But everybody knows that without risk nothing happens, neither failure nor success. So my next question is then why is it important for the young talent to take risks? I would like to start with Ms. Baird. Okay, so I'm going to be very candid about this here. I don't think today's generation needs a push to kind of take a risk. They're already taking, they're up for taking risks and I see this all the time in my organization and we have a high percentage of young employees working with us and they're always up to take more risks. They jump on opportunities. They want to work on new business pitches. They want to write content. They want to also be a part of a content team. They want to integrate in whatever way they can. So, and in fact, they kind of also reach out to leaders, mentors, asking if they can do something different than you. And I'll just say that they're quite fearless now when it comes to actually taking risks and that is something that I genuinely respect about them because they are all out. They want everything. So I think that's not a challenge for the young generation now. Definitely. Mr. Mukherjee, I'll take this question. I think I partly agree with Megha because of course I have a chunk of people who basically of course are there to learn. I have a person who's doing content, social media. But I feel there are a lot of people who are still not able to overcome that risk and are still in their comfort zone. So the message I would like to give them is of course you will have to overcome fears because if you say, oh no, I can't do this. I see a lot of people going through mental stress of course due to the COVID hit for two years. But the only thing I would like to say is not give up because if you don't try, you will not understand. That's how you learn from your mistakes and that's what I keep on mentoring my team whenever someone is in trouble. I personally, even if there's an intern, I personally talk to them because we don't know how people go and how what's happening in their personal life. But I feel they basically have to eventually take that risk, come out of their comfort zone, try new things. So I had one girl who had a stage fear and she started crying, oh, I can't do it. But I said, you'll have to push. We as a boss will have to eventually push you. Otherwise you won't learn things. So I think the message would like is that you'll of course have to tackle your mind in that situation because it's no one is gonna tell. No parents are gonna just tell and help but it is you, you have to decide what you have to do. So I think it's just that you have to push themself. We as leaders out here have to keep motivating them, give them surprises. That's how I think they'll be able to take that further step. Miss Singh, what would you like to say on this? No, I agree with the both of them. And I think I would like to just take a step back and in terms of more than why it is important for the young brigades to take risk. I think the pertinent question should be that how do we enable the young brigades to take risk? Because it is us as leaders to build that environment. And the first and foremost thing is that you have to, along with giving them responsibility and the push, you have to also give them a sense of ownership. Casing, so a lot of times there is a culture in the company where everything is vested, the decision making is vested on one person or just the team leaders. Now, if I look at my current organization itself as a casing point, we work almost like individual business units. Like every team leader is like an entrepreneur and within the unit they are given the right of ownership, responsibility, freedom to take calls and decisions, right? You're right from resource planning to building your team to MIS, planning your top line, bottom line. And that trickles down to even the junior level people and the mid-level people where not for everything you need the approval of your senior most person. So I think that kind of environment will help them to start taking decisions from a very early stage, which will eventually help them also to take risks eventually. And the second important point in this is that also pushing the young professionals into creative and out-of-the-box thinking from the start. So a lot of times when you're working on big mandates or big pitches or big campaigns, you're so bogged down by it that you only go to your best people, like your senior most people, but you forget that sometimes even the upcoming talent of the junior people, an idea can come from anywhere, right? And sometimes it comes from the most and the least expected places. So the idea is that you recognize people who have a creative bent of mind and hone that talent well. You give them a framework, give them an understanding of how campaign planning works so that they are able to think within that framework and come back to you with ideas which can actually add value to the larger client narratives. So coming to the last question of this session and also it can be considered as a concluding remark for all the panelists, how can young professionals identify opportunities and leverage them? Mr. Amrutkar, please take over. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I feel the basic thing of identifying is that you basically need to enjoy what you do. If you don't love what you do, then I think you're not at the right place. I think the first important aspect for any young talent who's trying to make their career in PR has to that they have to enjoy. To give my example, when I started my journey with Archduck and later I figured that what is what I want to do. When I used to go with my friends in the malls, I figured that fashion is what inclines me. So that's how I basically now running a fashion PR agent. So I think the first thing that, and the other thing what I feel is, of course you have to keep growing. Everything is a learning, each day is a learning. So you have to keep learning things, do your research, do your homework. I think that is what I tell my teammates as well, that you have to keep your eyes. Instagram is there, but you just have to take the points what campaigns are happening. So I think the learning has to keep on going on. So I think these are some important points where I feel that young talent has to eventually keep in mind. Ms. Singh, what are your concluding remarks on this? Great. So I like to share a very interesting conversation that I, so I was in Mumbai a couple of weeks back and I met this very senior COPCOM head and of a very, very reputed MNC almost. And he was sharing his experience of how, a lot of students today and a lot of students in Mascom, et cetera, are not looking at PR as a career option because he was visiting a very reputed academic institute. And he said that, the Dean was sharing that how in the entire Mascom PR is at the lowest end of the students' preference. And that was something which was very some. So the idea first is for us, how can young talent identify opportunity is one thing. But firstly, we need to identify and do PR almost for PR industry. So that the young talent, upcoming talent can start seeing the opportunities in the PR industry itself, right? Coming to the existing set of professionals and what they need to do is firstly, you need to do more than your job description. So don't wait for an opportunity because then opportunity is there. And you just have to keep your eyes and ears open. Sometimes it can even mean going beyond your existing KRA. Like I know a lot of people in my current organization also who've gone much beyond their KRA and they've done things which were not really expected out of them. But today that has helped them grow professionally and they've actually become pillars of strength, pillars of this organization almost. So I'm saying go beyond your KRA. Don't stick to your job description. And second is be vigilant and be aware because you are a PR professional. So you need to be very aware of what is happening around you. And by being aware and knowing what's happening around you, you may open a new opportunity for you. You might be able to create something valuable from things that are changing around you. And you may be the first one actually to understand that category and turn it into an opportunity. So be aware of what is happening around you in terms of buzzwords, the new trends that are coming. And there are so many new formats. It's not just news. There are so many verified options for you to actually consume content from and build on your industry knowledge. Ms. Bail, what are your concluding remarks? Honestly, I think it will be unfair if you kind of club it under one or two umbrella. It purely depends from person to person. I think there are some who come with a clear direction and a clear mindset that what they want from an organization and what are their future goals going to be. Such young professionals, I think, should identify a mentor in the organization and kind of reach out to them, asking for suggestions on how they can enhance their skills and obviously how they can reach kind of their growth. Whereas there might be also a set who are not really clear to what they want from an organization or what direction should they go in. So for them too, I think it is very important to again identify a colleague or a mentor with whom they can discuss their interests, skills, areas of improvement and maybe seek help to kind of outline a roadmap for their growth, keeping all these factors in mind. In overall, I think it is important for an organization to identify skills and interest areas of such kind of people and accordingly give them roles which is suited to that particular person. Thank you so much, Ms. Behl. Thank you to all the panelists for joining here for us and for having such an insightful conversation. I'm sure all the viewers have noted down the points that you discussed and thank you so much for joining. Thank you so much. Thank you, thanks a ton. Have a good day, everybody.